


Per Aspera Ad Astra [Through Hardship to the Stars]

by she_who_the_river_could_not_hold



Series: Troped: Fic Challenge [9]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Modern(ish) Era, The Vast of Night AU, Twilight Zone inspired, X-Files Inspired, is friends to distant acquaintances to friends to lovers a tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25337800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold/pseuds/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold
Summary: It's boredom one fateful night that leads Clarke Griffin to ditching the first basketball game of the season. That same boredom then leads to her choosing to hang out with one Bellamy Blake – which should feel weirder than it is since they haven't really been friends since his sister's disappearance two years ago.But then their nightreallytakes a turn.The two of them discover a strange audio frequency that could change the small town of Arkadia, New Mexico – and the future – forever. Dropped phone calls, forgotten tapes, and strange lights follow Bellamy and Clarke as they race through the night on a scavenger hunt to discover the truth. That maybe there was something more to Octavia's disappearance, maybe there's more to their friendship than being just friends, and that maybe they aren't as alone in the universe as they thought.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, John Murphy/Emori (brief)
Series: Troped: Fic Challenge [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1524449
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40
Collections: Chopped 3.0 Round 2





	Per Aspera Ad Astra [Through Hardship to the Stars]

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my submission for Chopped: The 100 3.0, Round 2! This round’s theme was sci fi and the four tropes were: 
> 
> **1\. Based on a TV Show or Movie:** I’ve based this on _The Vast of Night_ , an Amazon original movie by first time director, Andrew Patterson. The show was directly inspired by the Twilight Zone and I’ve added in a dash of The X-Files to the story to work with the characters and required tropes.  
>  **2\. Reunion**  
>  **3\. Kiss to Keep Cover/Keep a Secret**  
>  **4\. Forehead Touch**
> 
> Also this is an AU in the sense that I’m aware basketball is not a fall sport for high school (at least in America) but that doesn’t fit the vibe, so here we are. 
> 
> There are some characters and minor plot points of season seven referenced but you don’t have to be currently watching for it to make sense! The movie also originally takes place in the 50s but I’ve updated the plot to be vaguely the late 90s/early 2000s.

_“You are entering a realm between clandestine and forgotten, a slipstream caught between channels, the secret museum of mankind, the private library of shadows. All taking place on a stage forged from mystery, and found only on a frequency caught between logic and myth. You are entering Paradox Theater.” –– The Vast of Night, 2020_

* * *

Clarke absent-mindedly chewed on the edge of her nail while she watched cars slowly pull into the high school parking lot. It was the opening game night for the Arkadia High Explorers and no one in the small town was going to miss it. 

What a snooze-fest. 

There was only sport Clarke cared about and that was soccer, but no one else here seemed to and so instead she was used to suffering and listening to everyone in town gush about basketball. Girls swooned over the players (as if being tall was a personality trait for guys) and parents preened when their kid’s name was printed in the paper. It even meant that her mom, General Surgeon of their small local hospital, made time to come to games to rub elbows with parents and to chat up potential donors. 

Claiming to be craving some nachos, Clarke had ditched her mom and her boyfriend Marcus Kane. He was a nice enough guy and he seemed equally disinterested in basketball, but he put up with it for her mom and well… he was the high school principal. What else was he supposed to do but show up and smile at the games? Her mom knew her well enough to know that Clarke did _not_ enjoy the plastic-like, nasty nachos cranked out by high schoolers and their PTA parents, but she couldn’t exactly say no to her daughter in front of other parents. So Clarke had accepted the handful of bills her mom had passed to her with a forced smile and nearly danced her way out of the gym. 

The only problem now was figuring out what to do this evening. As she had noticed from her time inside the gym and now sitting outside on the sidewalk, everyone really was here. 

She could go home and see if Raven was available to chat on the phone. But she had started her first year of college last week and Clarke didn’t want to bother her too much. Wells was three hours ahead in Virginia and was adamant about his sleep schedule all the time, especially since she was pretty sure he had a track meet tomorrow morning.

Clarke would never admit to anyone that her mom was right about her not having enough friends, but a night like this certainly highlighted the fact. 

It also would have been a lot easier if she had a car. 

Heat from the New Mexico late summer day was still pressing into the evening. The rough cement of the sidewalk against the backs of her thighs would have made her regret her choice of super denim shorts if it wasn’t for the fact that she hated sweating more than anything. And the odds were high that she would be having to walk home if she wanted to completely ditch tonight, so she was still thankful that she wore them even if it meant she was going to have gravel imprints on her skin. 

She was in the middle of her internal shorts debate when a pair of black Vans came into view and stopped beside her.

“What are you doing out here, Griffin? The game’s inside.”

The arrival of the shoes and the voice that came with them drew Clarke’s gaze upward until it landed on the slow smirk of one Bellamy Blake. 

“You know I hate basketball,” she muttered, quickly looking back in front of her. 

She could hear him chuckle and despite not wanting to, she found herself looking back up at him. He was looking out at the parking lot as well and he waved at one or two other students walking in, but he stayed standing next to her.

“Why are you here?”

He looked back down at her, eyebrow raised. 

“Had to swing by and get the roster so I can give the usual shoutout during downtime so parents at home know the score, you also know that,” he teased back, echoing her own words back at her. 

Right –– Bellamy’s side gig of being the town’s most popular DJ and radio host. And really, the only one except for when sometimes Maya Vie hosted in the mornings. He’d started working there his sophomore year of high school and from what she’d heard around town, was still working there as he took a gap year before college. There wasn’t a reason for him to do a full-on broadcast of the game, not with almost the whole town there, but he usually would pop over at different intervals to get updates for the few people who hadn’t gone to the game.

“Plus,” he gestured with his right hand and her eyes followed the movement, “I had to come borrow this video camera from Jasper.”

“What do you need that for?”

“What is this, twenty questions?”

Somehow after all of these years, Bellamy still managed to make her feel like an annoying kid even though she was just a few weeks shy of turning eighteen. So all Clarke could do was let out a frustrated huff while Bellamy laughed to himself. 

“How about you come hang with me at the station?” 

Bellamy’s suggestion was out of the blue and Clarke blinked a couple times in surprise. But his smile was genuine and he even offered a hand for her to use to get up. Which she took, albeit a bit reluctantly. She didn’t have anything else to do tonight, which was something she had just been bemoaning about to herself. Rejecting his offer seemed silly, even with the distance between their friendship.

The two of them walked over to Bellamy’s bike that he’d ridden over, their shoes crunching on the loose gravel in the parking lot. He was humming to himself and Clarke was doing everything she could to act like this was completely normal. Because at one point in their lives, this had been. They’d just been much younger and more carefree.

But now she was a senior in high school, he was taking a gap year before college, and Octavia was no longer racing ahead of them. 

Octavia wasn’t here at all anymore.

Clarke’s memories were cut short by Bellamy’s expectant look at her and she realized he was waiting for her to climb onto the bike behind him. He’d swung the video camera’s strap around his chest and was waiting somewhat patiently for her while she spaced out. Thankful for the darkness of the night and the sparse lighting to hide her blush at the impending lack of space between them, Clarke swung her leg over the back tire and stepped onto the bike pegs. She saved wrapping her arms around his chest last, moving them cautiously down from his shoulders. 

He didn’t wait for her to get comfortable and immediately began to pedal, earning a small shriek from her and instantly tightening her grip on him. She could feel, more than hear, the chuckle that it brought out of him.

He was broader than she remembered and it made her feel bashful at that very thought. This was _Bellamy_ after all. She’d watched him go through puberty. Ugh. 

“As much as I’m cool with silence, you’re allowed to talk,” mused Bellamy suddenly. Clarke tore her eyes from the back to school signs on the stores to look at the back of his head, snorting.

“You always said I talked too much.” 

“Just tell me something cool you’ve learned recently.”

How very him: always wanting to talk about education or something. It would have made Clarke roll her eyes but there still was some time left to go on their ride so she tried to think of something interesting to pass the time. Something that he wouldn’t already know.

“Well, Raven was just telling me about this cool female scientist. Apparently she’s working on creating some type of AI that they can implant into your mind. It’ll like back up your memories or something. ”

Bellamy let out a bark of laughter.

“Yikes, I’m not having anyone put any technology inside me.” 

Clarke hummed in noncommittal agreement. “Same, probably, but it’s still cool. I think they’re going to try to use it on explorers first, like astronauts or something else that’s dangerous. That way we don’t lose out on what they’ve seen in case something goes wrong.”

“Goes wrong? Like how?”

Clarke wrinkled her nose as she thought back to the conversation she and Raven had had the other week. “Pretty sure Raven mentioned some company that’s focused on interplanetary travel. So these people are trying to find new planets or whatever for us to live on once the Earth is done for. I think they’re called Eligius.”

“Maybe they should be more focused on how to help the planet we’re currently on,” came Bellamy’s grumbled response and Clarke inwardly agreed. But Raven’s excitement had been palpable about the whole thing and it had intrigued Clarke even as much as she doubted it. But maybe this AI wouldn’t be like the types in the movies. The prototype Raven had described didn’t quite seem like it, but then again Clarke didn’t understand a lot of this.

“I guess it’s still good to explore outer space either way though. For science, even if we never go up there as a species,” she eventually responded.

“What if there’s like… aliens or shit up there?” 

Clarke couldn’t tell if Bellamy was being serious or not but it made her smile as she contemplated it. 

“Then we’d have the memory AI to prove it to us, especially if the aliens feel like murdering the astronauts. So we’d have the warning then.” 

Bellamy was silent for a moment after that, before shrugging. “I guess. I still don’t want anyone putting anything inside me that doesn’t need to be there.”

“That’s because you're going to be a teacher, you wouldn’t need one,” Clarke teased back. “The biggest danger you’ll face is an overly hyper middle schooler.”

At her words, Bellamy slightly cocked his head just enough to glance back at her before looking back at the road. 

“I didn’t think you’d paid attention when I talked about that stuff.”

“You never shut up about mythology, how was I supposed to ignore it?” The quip wasn’t as sassy as she was hoping it would be, but it still garnered a small laugh from Bellamy. And then it also made them both fall quiet. 

The Blake family’s backyard had been sprawling and unmanicured. Clarke’s mom would have been shocked at the idea of them traipsing about and ruining the Griffin lawn, but Aurora had encouraged them to camp out there. You never really had to worry about weather so they rarely actually stayed inside their tent, pulling their blankets out and the three of them laying out amongst the vast New Mexico night sky. Bellamy pointing out constellations and reciting their stories that he’d memorized, Octavia picking at the already sparse grass behind them and scattering it on Clarke’s legs. She was usually the first to fall asleep so it would leave Clarke to listen to Bellamy’s voice, dozing off as he’d confidently talk about the day he’d teach ancient history to kids who would actually listen to them. 

But once Octavia had disappeared, a night that still haunted the edges of Clarke’s mind, that had all changed. 

Clarke didn’t get to go over there anymore, Abby too worried about how a young girl had vanished from her own house without a trace. Bellamy didn’t try to hang out at her house. The town spent a year being on edge of another disappearance before returning to normal, but their friendship had been changed forever. Their trio had been broken and beyond just casual conversations at school as their years overlapped, that had been it for them. 

That didn’t stop Clarke from being aware of Bellamy though. He was impossible to completely ignore at school, somehow one of the most popular guys despite not being on an athletics team. And in a small town? No one was safe from gossip – especially the single mother and her son who’d both been home when her daughter went missing one night. Aurora still kept up her seamstress job but everyone whispered that she hadn’t been the same as she had been two years ago. Nearly a recluse at this point, only the occasional grocery store sighting was enough to confirm she still lived at the tiny house on the corner. 

Navigating those middle years of high school without them on her side had been difficult, Raven very much her own type of person and Wells across the country since sixth grade. Raven had been a year above just like Bellamy too, both of them then graduating last year. Which made it all the more surreal that she was now hanging out with Bellamy tonight after all of that. A fun-filled childhood friendship that hadn’t quite ended… just floated away.

As they pulled up to the tiny radio station, a remodeled house that could barely be called a house, Clarke wondered if that was something that would be able to change tonight. 

She casually flicked on the lights in the place as she followed Bellamy into the station, scoping it all out. ARK100.0 was the only local station so it stayed pretty busy from what Clarke knew, so she was impressed at how small the station actually was. Bellamy seemed right at home though, dropping his bike off in the hallway before grabbing them some glasses of water from the tiny kitchen to the right. She accepted it and settled into a large, oversized chair in the corner, watching as Bellamy got everything set up. In the corner, a small TV was shoved into the corner with grainy footage of the local news. Most of the radio equipment was already running, lights and buttons all in positions and lit up that she didn’t recognize. She and Octavia had never bothered coming over to the station while Bellamy worked. They’d been in 8th and 9th grade respectively and at that age, it seemed lame to come hang out while he worked. Not when it was the perfect chance to read trashy romance novels they snuck from the library or magazines without having Bellamy gripe about them not reading more educational material. 

He must have had music set up to play while he darted over to the high school because Bellamy didn’t have to adjust much, sliding back into his seat and setting up his mic and headphones. 

Time passed somewhat slowly but it was certainly better than what Clarke probably would have ended up doing on her own if Bellamy hadn’t invited her over. It was soothing to hear his occasional commentary, telling his usual bad jokes and historical anecdotes between songs. Sometimes there was an update for the game too. But Clarke also didn’t want to bother him so she did her own searching for entertainment. That way she wouldn’t just bea creep sitting there listening to him. Finally, her eyes landed on a black box on a table next to her.

“What’s this?” Clarke held up the device. It looked like an oversized walkie-talkie and since Bellamy was going to have to mainly work, not entertain her, she was going to do it with whatever she had hanging around her. And this looked promising. 

Bellamy’s eyes narrowed at her question as he finished announcing the next song that was coming up before muting his mic and turning to look over his shoulder at her. “It’s a Ham Radio,” he explained, “it’s Miller’s. He was hanging out earlier and left it hanging around.” 

He said it as if Clarke would know what to do with it, but she didn’t want to bother him about it so she just nodded and went back to fiddling with the device. Saying it belonged to Miller was probably an exaggeration, he was prone to occasionally stealing stuff but she wasn’t going to comment on that either. He was Bellamy’s friend, not hers, so he probably had a better idea of who Miller was as a person than she did.

Satisfied enough that she wouldn’t break anything by messing around with the buttons, and checking that Bellamy had his headphones set so it wouldn’t be too loud, Clarke began to fiddle with the dials. She moved each knob slowly, her fingers barely moving it at a time so that she could try to figure out each sound that accompanied a new airwave. At one point it just sounded like gibberish, another sounded like a normal conversation. She was tempted to stay on that one for a little while longer, but it felt too weird after a few minutes. So she kept switching frequencies out of curiosity, even though she didn’t know what she was even hoping to hear. 

She’d just finished rotating the knob again when Bellamy’s laugh broke through her thoughts and she looked up. Outside of school hallways she hadn’t heard it much from him, and even then it was less than it used to. Everyone had seen the toll that Octavia’s disappearance had taken on him and even just hearing this one burst of laughter was enough to make her smile at seeing him relaxed. There was also a bang of nostalgia too and she wondered what memories they had missed out on by not being friends these last two years.

Because she was distracted by Bellamy, Clarke let the radio stay on the same frequency longer than she had meant to. It had been a silent one, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But then she began to hear a low, quiet almost electrical humming come it. Confused, Clarke looked back down at the device in her lap and carefully turned up the volume. 

The humming became louder, more static coming into it. It almost felt like it was vibrating, echoing through something though through what it wasn’t obvious. 

Something felt uncomfortable settled in Clarke’s stomach as she listened to it. She didn’t know why, but something felt off about it. 

Glancing up to say something to Bellamy about it, ask him what it was or if he’d heard it before, Clarke’s eye instead caught the TV in the corner. The image on the screen was flickering in and out and after a beat, she realized that the glitching was lining up with the humming coming from the radio. Her arm hair raised as goosebumps quickly erupted on her skin. 

“Did you hear that?” Bellamy’s voice cut sharply through to her and she looked over at him. He was holding his headphones away from his ears as if they had burned him. 

She held up the radio in surprise.

“I think it came from this.”

“Yeah, but I just heard it come through my radio. I’m sure it just disrupted everything.” He frowned. “It sounded familiar…”

Now it was Clarke’s turn to frown, making her way off of the chair and over towards Bellamy.

“Well maybe it was just some fluke? I bet you could ask people listening if they knew it. Maybe some radio expert will call in and tell you that you need more equipment.”

He snorted at that but shrugged all the same, sliding his headphones back on and leaning into the mic. 

“Sorry about that everyone. Hey listen up though, a quick query for all you tuning in right now. If you heard that sound that just came through and know what is, give the station a ring and let us know. It came through a separate Ham radio we’ve got and maybe something is just tangled out there in the wavelengths, but we’d love to know your thoughts. The lines are open.”

And then they sat there.

It was hard to tell how long they waited, the music playing in the background mixing with the sound of the clock ticking on the wall. Every second seemed to blend together in a slow, muted pace in the spaces of breath in the song. 

But just when it was seemingly nothing, just a dead end, the phone rang.

Even though they’d been expecting it, both teenagers jumped at the jarring ringtone that echoed throughout the tiny station. Bellamy lunged for it, the momentum causing the wheels on his chair to start to spin in the opposite way as he grabbed onto the receiver. 

“Welcome to ARK100.0, thanks for calling in. Please hold while I put you on air,” he rattled off, letting the song come to its conclusion as he set up the phone call to broadcast. “And you’re good.” Both him and Clarke grew still then as they waited to hear the caller.

“Hello,” came a crackled voice over the line.

“Hi there,” Bellamy responded, his eyes wide as he looked over at Clarke. He still had his radio voice on, the same voice he used when giving speeches at school. It was the kind that was friendly but in charge, charming. Clarke tried to ignore how much she liked the sound of it and instead focused on the person on the line.

“I uh… I heard you play that sound and ask if anyone knew what it was.” The voice seemed to belong to a man, wary sounding but there was a hint of anticipation to his words. If Clarke could guess, she’d assumed he was older. Probably even older than Marcus.

“Yes sir, that’s right. We were hoping someone might have an idea of what it was and tell us a little bit about it. Think you could do that for us?” 

Bellamy yanked out a notebook from his backpack before nodding at Clarke and then the video camera. She could tell that he was silently telling her to record the conversation and so she quickly propped it up on her knees, zooming in just enough so that Bellamy was in frame while the call happened. He grinned at her as she did and she couldn’t help but smile back. 

“Yes, yes I think so. I’d like to tell my story.” 

“Great. How about we start with your name. I’m Bellamy, in case you’re new to the station. What’s yours?” 

A brief cough on the other end and then, “My name is Orlando.” 

Bellamy scribbled that down on the notebook before adjusting his microphone. “It’s nice to meet you Orlando. So tell me, what do you know about this sound?”

At even the mention of the sound, goosebumps ran down Clarke’s spine. It was like there was still a distant echo of it, reverberating through her mind. 

“I think in order to do that, I need to tell you a little bit more about myself.” Orlando chuckled slightly and Clarke warmed to the voice of the person on the other line. She wondered what he looked like, his voice painting its own image in her mind. “I didn’t have much going for me for a while, so I joined the military. Eventually that didn’t work out so I just kept going from job to job. After a couple of years, I ended up in Arkadia and found myself working for Second Dawn.”

Bellamy and Clarke both instinctively nodded even though Orlando couldn’t see them. Second Dawn was a company that was technically privately owned, but did most of their work with the military. A couple decades ago they had operated one of their headquarters just outside of Arkadia. No one quite knew what they did; a mixture of mining, engineering, aircraft. The base was still out there but everyone rumored that one day people had just stopped showing up to work out there. Second Dawn was still in business, but whatever it was they’d been doing here, was over. 

“Now in this type of field,” Orlando continued, “there are of course jobs you do that you don’t know anything about. Doesn’t matter if it’s corporate or military. Anyway, I was working a night shift. I wasn’t in any of those fancy jobs or whatever, I never even went to college. But I get there and my supervisor comes and gets me. A small helicopter came out and picked us up to take us a bit further into the desert. Still by Arkadia, but more south. All desert scrubs and flatlands. But uh, there were tents there too. Tunnels and underground labs or something. We were all told it was classified, but not too unusual since Second Dawn did a lot of work with the military. I didn’t question it at the time. We helped expand them, making what felt like a large hole out there amongst everything. Windows and hallways, connections to ventilation, the whole works. Then one morning, we woke up and reported to duty, and there was something enormous in that hole, covered in a tarp.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Clarke nearly kicked Bellamy for interrupting but fought back the urge, continuing to focus on keeping the camera as still as possible. In the frame, Bellamy’s forehead was furrowed as he waited for the man to answer him. The lighting in the station was dark, his already near

Orlando’s voice grew distant as he thought back. “It was bigger than an airplane, but no one was allowed to see it. And there were guards surrounding it all day. We could only get small glances in when we thought no one was looking. It was mostly smooth, but it looked broken, or damaged, because there were some rough patches.”

“You think it was American?” Bellamy’s voice was hushed in suspense and Clarke could feel her heartbeat thudding against her chest. 

“There was no way to know,” was all Orlando said back. 

Clarke wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse to think of like that.

“But before we could look at it any further, the mining project was shut down. When they were done with us, they got us all boarded on a plane. And then when the propellers started to spin and we were about to take off, the radio started playing that sound. The sound you played on your station just a bit ago.”

“You sure it’s the exact same?”

“Oh, I couldn’t forget it. Not for the life of me.”

 _Another long, drawn-out cough_.

“Once we finally took off,” he continued on, “I looked out the window and you could see the higher ups starting to cover the landing pad with dirt. Like we had never been there. And then the sound disappeared and we flew back to the headquarters. When I got back, oh about a month or so after, I started getting really sick. It was some type of lung condition. So I don’t breathe so well, and I still think whatever was in that area of the desert caused it. Maybe it was radiation.” 

Bellamy’s face in the viewfinder of the camera mirrored what Clarke imagined hers looked like. There were so many aspects to this story that made her feel ill and it was impossible to focus on just one. 

“So do believe this is a sound engineered by Second Dawn for the US military?” Bellamy found his voice eventually and she was impressed at how calm he still sounded. Still holding onto his radio voice despite all of that information.

A low rough chuckle came from the other end of the line, static cutting in briefly. 

“Oh, most certainly not. A friend, a coworker –– his name was Dev. He worked as a radar operator. The few of us who heard it asked him what he thought.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said it wasn’t military. From ours or any other country. It was coming up from thousands of feet higher than anything could fly.”

The inside of Clarke’s mouth felt dry. She occasionally enjoyed a good conspiracy theory here and there, though they weren’t things she regularly paid attention to. She was of course skeptical of the systems that held everything up in the country, she had her father to thank for that before he passed away. She wasn’t afraid to question things that felt wrong.

But this felt very, very wrong. And unclear. 

“And he’s confident it’s not NASA up––”

“It’s definitely not NASA,” Orlando was quick to interrupt Bellamy. More static began to interfere with the call. “And signals like yours have been caught going back and forth.”

“What do you mean?” 

Clarke was surprised it was her voice saying the words and Bellamy looked up at her in shock. If Orlando was surprised at the unexpected third voice joining the conversation, he didn’t express it verbally. 

“Like communication. Like one says something here in this part of the sky, and another says something back. Sometimes they were recorded at Sputnik heights, and sometimes just a few hundred feet off the ground.” 

“Where?”

“Lots of places. All over. Here.”

He started coughing more violently then and Bellamy stopped pressing him for questions. Clarke went silent after her own outburst. 

Eventually Orlando’s coughing subsided and the only noise was the machines around her and Bellamy humming as they worked. She almost had forgotten that this was all on the radio, all connected back to that strange sound. 

“There is a part of this you can look into though.”

At those words, both Clarke and Bellamy perked up. They were two of the very few teenagers in their town who had some sort of interest in research and after everything that had been said, the idea of being able to back it up was intriguing. 

“Dev, that radar operator, he never stopped hunting the signals. He was trying to record one on his own. Using old radio and war surplus equipment he’d repaired.”

“Did he do it?” Clarke asked, leaning in. The camera almost cropped out Bellamy’s face now but she wasn’t paying attention to it anymore. 

“Yeah, he did,” Orlando said with a soft chuckle. “Took a long time. But one night he finally got one and recorded it. He made a lot of copies of it, sent it out to the few of us still alive. And with it a letter that told us, it was something talking and then disappearing.”

“You said he made copies?”

“He did. I don’t have mine anymore though, burned it years ago just in case. But Dev, he was a local Arkadian.”

Rubbing anxiously at his face, Bellamy looked down at the notebook in front of him where he’d scribbled down some of the story. “The name sounds vaguely familiar. I know some stuff was recently donated to the library from someone who passed away. We can start there and see if we can find out more about him.”

“I wish you luck.” 

Bellamy cleared his throat. “Well I thank you for telling your story, Orlando. Can I ask why you’re telling this to all of us? Even with the secrecy of the project at the time?”

“I suppose I’m telling you because I’m sick. And I’m old. But hearing that sound again, even faint like the way you played it, brought me back. And that story needs to be told, be broadcasted out to the people before it’s too late.”

“Too late? What would be too late? Orlando, what happens if we find the tape and play it?”

The man sighed and the static crackled fiercely before he spoke again. 

“I don’t know. But if you’re going to do it, you better do it. Because something’s up there now, and they don’t stay for long.”

Before either of the teenagers could reply, the line clicked dead.

* * *

“Bellamy! For heaven’s sake, you can’t actually believe that!”

Clarke watched incredulously as Bellamy hoisted his bike up and out of the hallway of the house. When he seemed determined to ignore her, she stormed outside after him. 

“Think about this logically! You can’t honestly think that he really was hearing aliens. Or that somehow this sound is them trying to communicate with us, if it’s even somehow real,” she huffed out. This was utter bullshit. Of all people, Bellamy was the one to believe the stranger on the phone? He loved mythology sure, but he wasn’t this big of a nerd. 

When he only cast a disgruntled look at her as he mounted the bike, Clarke clenched her jaw.

“Okay, but where do you think you’re going? Don’t just leave me here.”

Finally, Bellamy sighed and answered her. 

“I’m going to the library. I volunteered there this summer and I know what Orlando was talking about. The guy – Dev – I remember seeing a lot of his things in the basement. It all makes sense, they’re going to be setting up a historical walkthrough of Arkadia’s history for the founding’s anniversary this fall. They’ve got all sorts of shit from back then but I definitely know I saw that name. We need to go there and see what we can find.”

Clarke chewed on her lip. There wasn’t any harm in doing more research into this, it wasn’t like they had anything else going on. 

“So why film this stuff? Why the camera?”

“I’d just wanted to mess around with filming things this weekend, I swear I didn’t know when I got it. But come on, we can’t do all of this digging and have no proof of it. I mean Clarke, we could show that it’s all real. Think of how much money we could make if it’s true.” He was pleading with her now and she was thankful he didn’t seem to be about to just ditch her. 

But there was a way he spoke about this that felt different and her eyes narrowed as she studied him. The white grip of his knuckles on the handlebars. The way his expression swirled with a million emotions.

She’d been startled at his quick believing of Orlando’s story, but there was something else.

It was like he understood the points she was connecting without having to say a word. Bellamy’s shoulders sagged, the muscle in his jaw twitching as he contemplated his words. 

“I know you think I’m crazy for believing him. And what I’m about to say will probably freak you out even more. But I figured out why it was familiar to me too. His story triggered a memory, Clarke. A memory of the night Octavia disappeared. I heard _that_ sound.”

A silence fell between them.

Neither one of them had said it yet but it sat on her tongue all the same. _Aliens_. They were seriously having a conversation about aliens. And not just in a speculative sort of way, or in a high sort of way like how Jasper and Monty got during gym class instead of running. But in a very real the-government-or-someone-is-trying-to-cover-it-up and maybe-Bellamy’s-sister-was-abducted-sort-of way. And both of those options were weighted a lot more in reality than Clarke had ever applied to the idea of exterrestrials existing.

Staring at Bellamy now though, she didn’t have it in her to challenge him to a debate on this. When they’d be younger, she hadn’t hesitated to push back at him. He was one of the only people around who wasn’t afraid to argue with her. 

The heartbreak in Bellamy’s eyes right now though echoed the night he’d come to the Griffin residence, banging on the door in a frenzy. Eyes wide and pleading as he begged them to tell him if Octavia had come over to hang out with Clarke. The way his entire being had seemed to cave in when they’d been surprised at his statement, the house void of his younger sister thus opening up endless possibilities of what could have happened to her. The hope that had flickered in his eyes before they’d crushed it was back, clinging to a new hope that maybe he could find closure in this sound.

And that was how Clarke returned to standing on the back of Bellamy’s bike, her arms wrapped tightly around his torso, as they headed towards the Arkadia library. 

The moment outside of the station seemed to have bridged the final gap of the couple years apart as friends. Now she nestled her nose into his hair and breathed deeply the smell of the shampoo he’d always used, hoping that somehow the squeeze of her arms conveyed to him how much she supported him. Her friendship with the Blake siblings might have come through Octavia first, but he’d always be her best friend. 

Eventually the library came into view and they slid off of Bellamy’s bike to slink into the shadows to sneak up closer to it. Bellamy swore he still had access to get in so Clarke tried to squash all of the visions of them getting caught and her mom being called in. She definitely wouldn’t have a good explanation if that happened so Bellamy better be telling the truth. 

Her fears ended up being for nothing though as he was correct –– the key to the back door for employees was directly under the fawn statue just as he’d remembered it. It was just shy of 8:30pm now and the library would have been closed for over an hour at this point, giving them the cover that they needed to sneak in. No one really bothered with cameras around here, plus Bellamy had volunteered here so if anyone happened to spot them going in, it would be a solid enough alibi. Plus, who would think to check if two teenagers were trying to sneak into the library? So it was with that confidence, more than they probably should have had, that they snuck into the back.

Bellamy’s hand reached out for hers as he led the way, neither of them daring to turn on a light. Streetlights from outside shone a dim cast of light onto some objects in the first room, a break room by the looks of it, but then they plunged into darkness as they made their way through a hallway leading them deeper in. Clarke wondered how much Bellamy had volunteered here to have such a good memory of the layout, and once again thought about how he must have been trying to fill the void of another summer without his sister.

Suddenly Bellamy stopped and she nearly stumbled into the back of him. 

“Watch it,” she hissed. 

“Sorry,” he muttered back. “We’re here.”

A squeak of hinges and a flicked on light revealed what appeared to be a large storage room, filled to the brim with large metal shelving and boxes. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me, this is going to take ages,” Clarke grumbled as she looked around. The ridiculousness of the situation hit here again: they were looking for a tape with the only clue they had being that the man’s name was _Dev_. This was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

Bellamy turned to her with a smirk after shutting the door behind them. 

“That’s because you don’t know how to look, Princess.” She rolled her eyes at his teasing and glowered at him until he laughed. “Or, more like I helped put a lot of this stuff down here and I know exactly where to look. Over here.”

She followed him across the room where there was a large folding table shoved up against the wall. On it were multiple large cardboard boxes, poster boards, and a few bags of things. Bellamy immediately honed in on the boxes, nodding towards them.

“I doubt his stuff is in the bags or just floating about. Most everything ended up here in these to prevent them from floating about until the walkthrough is set up,” he explained. “We can divide and conquer here and then go from there. If it’s not here, then we’re shit out of luck and we go home.”

The two of them began to immediately dig into the boxes. Delicately, of course. A lot of this stuff was pretty damn old.

Clarke took two boxes to her side of the room while Bellamy did the same on the right. Bellamy had told her as they were coming in that half of his job over the summer had been just organizing things since most of the librarians hadn’t had the time beforehand. That was clearly the case as well for the materials for the exhibit. Arkadia’s history seemed as dry as the desert around them, but then again even just over an hour ago Clarke would have never thought someone here might have proof of aliens. Maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

As time ticked on, the piles around them soon grew larger. History of original pueblos on people’s land, to some of the original settlers. Handfuls of old photos that must have been submitted from families, spiderwebs of faded cursive on the back indicating the names and year it had been taken. Each one gave Clarke a strange sensation, holding a moment in history of a person who’s life had come and gone. She moved past those quickly. Bellamy’s piles grew as well and then once those first couple boxes had been taken care of, they quickly packed them up again before moving on. 

It was on their second round of boxes when Clarke unearthed it. 

A smaller box within a larger one, with a name and dates scribbled on it in pen as a type of an identifier for later. The word that jumped out was _Dev_ –– the name of what they were looking for.

“Bell!” She exclaimed, scrambling to her feet.

She was too caught up in her excitement to notice the old nickname slip from her as she gestured to the box at her feet. Bellamy hustled over to join her as she knelt back down to open it up.

On the top were a handful of old photos, a clear favorite medium for the exhibit. Most of them looked like a collection of photos of Air Force members, all stationed near Arkadia. The date on the back was from the 1940s, a timeline connecting them back to WWII. Next was a portrait of a man, seemingly Dev, that focused on a profile with sharp cheekbones and a defined nose that led to piercing dark eyes that stared straight at the camera. Clarke wondered if the photo had been taken before or after he started hearing the sound waves. 

They were able to ignore the folder of documents beneath the photos though. Just visible under the orange material was another object.

A dusty, hard-shell case for a tape. 

Clarke and Bellamy paused as they stared down into the box.

Were they getting in over their heads? 

“Well, we have to find out somehow,” she finally muttered. “And we should leave now just in case.” 

Bellamy nodded and quickly put the tape in his backpack as Clarke cleaned everything up. Soon enough, everything around them looked completely untouched. They did one last scope around them before making their way back into the hallway and the darkness. 

Mirroring their earlier steps, they continued on their way. They were almost to the door. They could nearly taste the freedom of the warm night air and the escape of the darkness that they could disappear into in order to research this. Figure out what the hell was going on.

And that was when Clarke saw the doorknob begin to turn, Bellamy spotting it at the same time.

“Shit,” Bellamy hissed, his hand pinching at her elbow to slow her down. “We can’t let them see that we’re taking this stuff.”

Clarke didn’t get the chance to give him a snarky reply that of course they couldn’t be found out, but she wasn’t able to say it because Bellamy kissed her.

Well, first Bellamy grabbed her by the waist and pushed her against the wall beside them and _then_ he kissed her.

It felt like Clarke’s mind short-circuited, suddenly enveloped by the sensation of being so close to him and feeling what it was like to have his lips against hers. They’d shoved each other around while fighting over the TV remote and he’d always been taller than her, but now they were older and it felt different. And yet a sense of familiarity, in the way he was still careful with her and in the safety she felt in his arms. 

She was getting lost in the sensation of the kiss, distracted by the way Bellamy’s lips moved against hers, that she genuinely forgot the whole reason they were kissing and was startled when the light above them came on.

“What in the––Bellamy Blake is that you?”

With what felt like reluctance on his end, Bellamy pulled himself away from Clarke. She blinked a few times and looked up, spotting the head librarian, Charles Pike, staring incredulously at the two. When he spotted her, his expression softened. Almost to a look of amusement really. 

“Ah, I get it.”

Bellamy cleared his throat. “Sorry sir, it won’t happen again.”

Pike didn’t notice the way that Bellamy shifted the backpack out of view behind him.

“I appreciate that. I don’t want to have to kick out the biggest readers in this town out of the library because they can’t keep their hands off each other.”

It was just simple teasing but it didn’t stop Clarke’s cheeks from turning a flaming red as the two stuttered out more apologies as they darted past him back outside. 

And her cheeks stayed flushed the whole way back to the station, giving a whole new experience to holding onto Bellamy while on the bike. 

Neither of them looked directly at each other as they stumbled back into the station. It was a bizarre feeling of deja vu as they moved through similar steps. This time though, Clarke yanked the chair up to be by Bellamy’s chair he broadcasted in and Bellamy pulled out an old tape player. Probably from when the station was founded. She would have been surprised except it was probably kept around out of Bellamy’s own nostalgia for old things. Then once again, Bellamy set himself up at the microphone.

“Hello everybody, we’re back in the station. If you’ve been following along, we heard earlier from our new friend Orlando about that strange sound you heard earlier. We’re about to play it once more, but we’ve got a better quality version now. If anyone out there, and we mean _out there_ , wants to respond, just let us know.” 

If Bellamy’s vague announcement was weird to anyone listening, hopefully they didn’t commit it much to memory. 

Bellamy turned to the vintage tape player beside him, connecting all of the proper wires to it to have it hooked up to play through. And then it began.

This time, the hum was more distinct than the Ham Radio. It was sharper, even for a tape well over fifty years old. And then the distinct, unexplainable noise began to come through the speakers. And hopefully to anyone who was listening, human or not. After letting it play for about three minutes or so, Bellamy paused the tape then, letting a silence fall into the station. He didn’t bother with starting any new songs or any sort of pretense that this was a normal occurrence for ARK100.0. They were in pure research mode.

The absence of the sound echoing in the room made it feel even more unnatural and Clarke sucked in her breath, trying to not even let her breath be too loud in fear of distracting from the potential reaction to it.

They waited anxiously to see what would happen.

They didn’t have to wait long.

Almost like a low siren coming from the distance, an echoing hum began to come through the machines –– not the tape that remained paused. 

They had an answer from whatever was out there.

The TV began to make almost sparking-like noises, drawing their attention up. Then the lights flickered, each longer than the last. Static burst from the radio, making Clarke and Bellamy instinctively reach up to cover their ears.

And then the power went out.

“Bellamy?” Clarke said slowly, her eyes struggling to adjust to the complete darkness.

“I’m here,” he grunted, closer than she remembered him originally being. “That’s definitely the sound. Not just from the Ham radio, but what I heard the night Octavia disappeared.” 

If the last time Bellamy had heard this sound and Octavia had disappeared, and before that Orlando and the crew had sighted a possible UFO hidden at the Second Dawn site, then that meant there was absolutely a connection. This most likely was a form of communication.

But did that mean someone else was going to be abducted tonight?

* * *

Their initial line of thinking was that maybe the Blakes were all connected somehow to this, so their first stop was to burst into Bellamy’s home completely unannounced. 

Aurora nearly screamed when they threw the front door open, bursting into the house with a clatter. Clarke was immediately thrust back into old memories of them running back into the house after a long day of playing outside or Abby dropping them off after hanging out at the mall and pretending to buy expensive clothes. But that was then and now there was a looming threat of another abduction hanging over them, preventing her from fully enjoying the feeling of being back at the Blake household. 

“Mom, hi. You’re home,” Bellamy wheezed out. He’d pedaled frantically to get them from the station to his place, using the relief of her still being there to lean against the doorframe and catch his breath. 

Aurora let out a weak chuckle, catching her own breath after being so startled. On the kitchen table in front of her was a sewing project and Clarke had a moment of guilt that they could have accidentally made her stab herself with a needle. But it was certainly better than coming back to an empty house. 

“Of course I am. Where else would I be? I promised Mrs. Green I’d have this taken care of by tomorrow afternoon,” she gestured to the clothing on the table. “It’s good to see you again Clarke, it’s been awhile.”

Clarke could only nod and give a slight wave, feeling a settling of awkwardness creep in. 

“What’s with the camera? Are you two trying to make a movie?”

Caught off guard, Bellamy and Clarke looked at each other before looking back down at the camera in Clarke’s hands. They’d been so focused on getting there that they hadn’t recorded any of it, though it certainly wasn’t necessary now with Aurora being confirmed home safe and sound. 

“Yeah, something like that,” she stuttered out, doing her best to plaster on a large smile. 

“Well you two have fun, don’t be out too late,” Aurora replied, clearly trying her best to be encouraging. A twinge of worry was still there though and Bellamy’s guilty expression conveyed what Clarke had reached as well. She was worried about losing her other kid, she didn’t need them scaring her like this. 

“That’s a great point Mom,” Bellamy said smoothly, grabbing Clarke’s elbow. “We should actually get going then, just wanted to make sure it was all good here. Don’t wait up for me.” It was a useless thing to add on for a worrying mother, but it was still a nice gesture. 

“Bye!” Clarke chirped over her shoulder as they quickly exited the house, Bellamy swinging the door shut behind them. They probably hadn’t even been there five minutes but at least they knew that she was safe. 

“Well at least they’re not targeting my family,” Bellamy said as they walked down the front walkway, as if he could read Clarke’s thoughts.

“But where to next?” 

Bellamy looked around anxiously at the other houses in the neighborhood, rubbing at his face. Almost no one else was home because of the game. 

“We should see if we can maybe borrow Miller’s truck tonight, mine’s in the shop right now,” he finally said, a plan clearly formatting in his mind as he spoke. “We can cover more ground, check in on people who are still home. We could drive more to the outskirts of town. If we don’t see anything, maybe it’s nothing. But then at least we’ll know it’s just a wild goose chase.”

Clarke nodded at that. It seemed like worth a shot.

“Come on, he lives this way,” Bellamy jerked his head down the street to their left. Without wanting to waste any more time, the two of them then began to jog from the front lawn to cross the street.

And nearly ran straight into a car driving down the street. 

It screeched to a halt, jerking forward and back at the speed at which the brakes were hit, and Clarke’s hand flew to her chest as she felt her heartbeat race at the near miss. This was the last thing they needed tonight, or anytime really as the unwanted image of Bellamy being struck by a car was thrust into the forefront of her mind.

“Hey! Bellamy, what’s the rush?” 

The car window rolled down to reveal fellow classmate and Arkadian, John Murphy. The streetlamp’s light shone down partially on his face, accenting his harsh features as his eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. “Didn’t your mom teach you to look both ways before you cross the street?”

“Not now, Murphy,” Clarke snapped from behind Bellamy. 

“Sorry man, we’re in a bit of a rush,” Bellamy quickly tacked on. “We’re just trying to figure something strange out and we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Something strange?” A voice floated from the driver’s seat and Clarke was barely able to make out the face of Murphy’s longtime girlfriend, Emori, in the car’s shadows. “We just saw some strange shit out in the desert if that’s what you’re talking about. Floating lights and everything.” 

Clarke reached out to Bellamy instinctively, her hand gently touching the small of his back and brushing against the fabric of his shirt as he turned back to look at her. They’d assumed that the aliens would be in town, but maybe there was something else that they were here for. Going straight to them seemed foolish, but this was also their best chance. 

“That’s––that’s exactly what we’re talking about,” Bellamy finally said turning back around. “Would you guys mind giving us a lift out there?”

Murphy turned back and looked towards Emori, the two having a silent conversation with merely a look. The naturalness of it gave Clarke an unprompted reminder of how similar that was to her and Bellamy. She quickly tried to shake it out of her mind but couldn’t stop the tingling on her lips of the memory of the kiss they’d just shared. There was hardly a rulebook for trying to prove the existence of aliens and preventing other abductions, but being distracted by someone’s lips seemed high on the list of things to not focus on during it. 

“Sure, why the hell not?”

The back of Emori’s car was compact, Bellamy’s knees bent upwards and even Clarke didn’t have much legroom. It smelled faintly of cigarettes, but less like the two of them had been smoking in it and more of a memory of maybe a past owner. A smell that you could never completely get rid of. Emori told them that they’d seen them just a ways out, east of Arkadia. Then they began the drive out. 

“Did you hear anything when you saw the lights?” Bellamy asked. His fingers drummed against his knee and Clarke recognized the telltale sign of his nerves taking over. A rare sight, one he normally tried to hide. She couldn’t blame him though. This was a situation that neither of them had expected to get thrown into headfirst earlier that night outside of the gym. 

“You mean like that sound you played on the radio earlier? With the old dude calling in?” 

“You caught that?” 

“Yeah man, we heard some of it while we were driving around,” Murphy drawled, jabbing at the car’s dash before twisting in his seat to get a look at the two of them. “That’s some wild shit.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Clarke couldn’t hide the nervousness in her voice.

Emori scoffed from the driver’s seat. At the noise, Clarke’s eyes drifted from Murphy’s stare to the older girl. Emori was a year older than Bellamy so Clarke had only vaguely known of her from school. Mainly because kids couldn’t stop gossiping about the girl who showed up on her eighteenth birthday with a face tattoo already or the fact that she had a deformity in the way of her left hand. No one really knew why, but it didn’t stop teenagers from being assholes. Clarke had thought she seemed cool, if mainly just intimidating. And now she was in the backseat of her car discussing aliens.

“Look, I doubt we’re the only thing in space with a conscious mind,” she said with a grimace, “but I do know for a fact that if Second Dawn is involved then something is up. And I totally wouldn’t put it past them to be covering something up as intense as the existence of aliens.”

Bellamy shifted forward in the seat, the sound of the leather material cracking as he did. 

“What do you know about Second Dawn?” 

Warm-brown eyes flicked into the rear-view mirror at Bellamy and Clarke before returning to the road. Clarke didn’t miss the way her grip tightened on the steering wheel or the sympathetic look that Murphy cast her way.

“I know we didn’t run in the same circle, but I’m guessing you know about City of Light.” 

Clarke nodded slowly, Bellamy’s nod a bit quicker in understanding. City of Light was the name of the trailer park outside of the town. Kids from there still went to Arkadia schools, they were the only ones around, but it was still very much its own community. Despite most people in Arkadia’s feelings about the place, Clarke figured most of the stereotypes were born out of a class prejudice –– something she knew was probably somewhat ironic coming from someone of an upper middle class family, but her dad had really tried to instill stuff like that into her. 

“Well it’s only about five or so miles from Second Dawn’s headquarters. Making shit for the military is one thing on its own, but whatever it is they’re working with is even worse than people think. My mom’s been trying to sue them since I was born.” Emori lifted up her hand and waved it sardonically at Bellamy and Clarke. “We haven’t been able to prove it’s from what they’re doing, but there’s enough radiation nearby that I’m not the only one with something like this.”

Saying she was sorry hardly seemed like enough Clarke thought grimly to herself. There weren’t enough apologies in the world for something like that, especially since she had a sinking suspicion that Emori’s family was right. And if Orlando’s story was true, something that was continuing to increase in chances, it certainly seemed like Second Dawn had been up to things. She didn’t know much about space, not nearly as much as Raven, but Clarke would bet a lot on the idea that any type of extraterrestrial material probably had a high level of radiation. 

“So you’re saying you did see something though?” Bellamy asked, not-so-subtly changing the topic so as not to put more pressure on Emori to talk about a clearly painful topic.

“Yeah. I mean it was mainly the lights. Like a ring of them, traveling really quickly at the horizon. I don’t think we heard anything weird, but it was definitely unnatural. There’s no way it was a plane or anything like that.”

Clarke opened her mouth to ask another question about the lights, but before she could the rock music playing in the car radio suddenly broke into an eruption of static. 

Then a deep electrical humming filled the car. 

Her breath hitching, Clarke’s hands began to tremble on the camera in her lap before she pulled it up to film. She could tell that something was happening, even before Murphy and Emori could react.

The humming increased, becoming the reverberating sound that had played through Dev’s tape and through the Ham radio. 

And then a bright white light began to rise up in front of the windshield. 

It almost seemed like a headlight, flickering in and out.

But then it stayed. 

Murphy and Emori’s bodies grew still, their heads falling back slowly. Tilting upwards, hypnotized.

“Bell, we have to get out of here!” Clarke cried out, her voice wavering as she did her best to capture what was happening in front of them. 

“I don’t know if we can just jump out without hurting ourselves,” he swore, looking out the window before looking back at the front.

Clarke had never been a praying person but she found herself hoping that if there was something out there, they would stop them from crashing the car. 

Emori’s hands were slack against the steering wheel, though somehow it still moved on the road as needed. Clarke struggled to keep herself from completely devolving into a full-blown panic attack.

“Hey, hey. Princess, look at me.”

Bellamy’s voice broke through the fog that was threatening to take over her brain and she sluggishly looked away from Emori to look at him. Even though the fear was still palpable on his face, his eyes were filled with a comforting warmth.

“I think we’re going to be okay, the car is slowing down.”

Luckily for them, Bellamy was right. It was like the car was bringing itself to a slow halt on its own even without Emori driving it. Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this nauseous, her hands clammy as she held onto the camera tightly. Next to her, Bellamy already had one hand on the handle to the door and the other just next to her, presumably to help yank her out of the car as soon as it was safe. She was thankful for that with how much like jelly her legs currently felt.

As the engine began to peter out and the car moved at a crawl, Bellamy practically kicked open the car and in one move, grabbed onto Clarke’s arm and helped pull her outside. 

Even with the car moving slower, they still hit the ground with a heavy impact, the shock of vibrating up Clarke’s legs as they made contact. She nearly dropped the camera but Bellamy managed to use his momentum to sweep her and the camera up and forward, coming into his arms to steady herself. Once her heartbeat and her body had settled to being out of the car, Clarke stole a look back behind them. Thankfully, Emori’s car had come to a stop on the edge of the road, out of harm's way and not crashed into the ground like she’d been petrified of.

There wasn’t time to waste though, the sound now echoing ahead of them and the lights beginning to swirl around them.

They took off into the desert.

It was a single-minded moment. She knew the footage would be shaky on the camera as she’d never run and tried to film something before. 

But this was all instinct. 

Bellamy’s longer legs carried him ahead of her. 

The lights were leading them further and further into the desert. Rationally, Clarke would have worried about the creatures that would be found out there. The holes that could twist one of their ankles. Cacti with spikes that could puncture their skin if they fell into one. But something in Clarke’s mind told her to not worry about it. Bellamy must have had the same gut feeling, his stride confident as he moved forward. 

Breathing was on the back of her mind but it all came slamming back into her as she came to a stop behind a suddenly stationary Bellamy.

She couldn’t ask him why he’d stopped, her voice gone as she looked out ahead of them.

Clarke nearly dropped the camera.

Dust swirled around their legs from a consistent strong gust of wind, the color of the dirt nearly a bright white as it reflected the lights in front of them. The lights that were directly coming from a slowly spinning saucer in the air.

From here, between the rotating flashes of light, Clarke could see the sleek metal-like material that it was made of. Almost oil-slick in color, a swirling mixture of greens and purples hidden amongst a gun-metal gray. She couldn’t tell if it was a window she was looking at or just shapes. Surely she hadn’t seen something––someone––looking at them. Glimpses and blurs of what looked like symbols were embossed in a ring around. Maybe not even symbols, maybe a language that she’d never heard. 

Her vision of the saucer was broken by the movement of Bellamy in front of her as he moved into her line of sight.

Similar to Murphy and Emori in the car, Bellamy seemed almost transfixed. He kept moving forward, his steps staggering as he moved forward. 

Clarke had been somewhat filming the saucer out of sheer luck of where she’d been holding the camera when she’d stopped, but all pretenses of getting footage of it stopped when Bellamy didn’t respond to her calling out his name.

At first she thought it was the wind swirling around them that stopped him from hearing her, but the more she watched him move the more she knew that it wasn’t that.

She knelt and placed the camera down on the ground, careful to not break it by accident, before taking off after Bellamy. The sound around them was almost becoming painful and it felt like she was stumbling against the noise itself as she hurried after him, calling out his name repeatedly. Eventually she caught up to him, her running outpacing his slow walk towards the UFO. Throwing herself in front of him, Clarke grasped onto his arms tightly.

“Stay with me, Bellamy. Stay with me please.” She couldn’t find the tears that were streaming down her face. She’d lost one friend already and seemingly to this very thing spinning above them. She couldn’t lose another one.

At the sound of her voice this close and the feel of her hands on him seemed to be what broke the hypnosis on him. Bellamy nearly fell against her as he came out of it and she watched as his eyes grew focused again and centered on her.

“I just want my sister back,” he said hoarsely, his voice cracking.

But rather than taking off again, a look of resignation came over him and he moved his own hands to touch Clarke’s face. His palm encased her cheek and that was the last thing she registered before the saucer flew directly over them. 

She could almost swear she was seeing stars, literal ones dancing in front of her vision. She struggled to hold on as long as possible, keeping her eyes open until she swore she might go blind. She had to keep watching though, she had to stare it all down. 

But it was becoming too powerful, too bright.

The sound around them vibrated the earth, sending tremors up their bodies. She could feel Bellamy’s body shaking against hers and it was that feeling that finally made her tear her gaze away from the blinding light. She could see his mouth moving but the sound was too loud around them for her to hear him. Instead, she leaned into him and even with his eyes tightly shut, he knew to lean forward as well, gently touching his forehead to hers. 

Once she could feel him tightly against her, Clarke finally closed her eyes. If this was going to be their final moment on this planet, she was going to let her senses only focus on him.

Even with her eyes closed it was impossible to fully shut out the blinding light and she could feel herself becoming disorientated. The only things grounding her were the feel of Bellamy’s arms around her waist and his forehead pressed against hers, his curls tickling her skin. Even the ground was unreliable. Was she standing still? Was she swaying? Were her feet lifting off as they floated away?

Was this what it was like to be abducted? 

Were mere human bodies meant to be ripped through time and space?

And then it was gone.

Like a switch had been flipped, everything went dark. Their bodies sagged against each other, telling her that it wasn’t her imagination that they’d been slowly stretching upwards. Wind from the saucer dissipated, bringing back the stillness of the desert night. Her legs wobbly, Clarke sucked in a steadying breath as she slowly opened her eyes. As she did, she watched Bellamy do the same. He hadn’t moved his head though, still resting against hers before eventually pulling himself upright (though not before planting a gentle kiss on her forehead). 

Blinking rapidly, Clarke slowly began to look around them. If they hadn’t been abducted, what had happened? Maybe the aliens had simply wanted to reveal themselves, a show of existence or a show of dominance over the human race. 

Slipping her hand down instinctively, Clarke grasped Bellamy’s as they looked around. The camera was still on the ground just a ways behind them. The plants around them, though looking slightly more windswept than normal, were all still there. As she breathed in, it felt like her ribcage was too large for her chest as she sucked in air. She couldn’t tell if she had even breathed during the past moments but now oxygen seemed more precious than ever before. 

But then Bellamy’s hand clenched around hers and all of her thoughts ceased as she looked to where he was pointing.

“Octavia,” she breathed out, her eyes widening at the sight in front of them.

Laying on the ground just ahead of them, her eyes closed as if she was asleep, was Octavia Blake. It was surreal, almost making the previous experience with the UFO feel like the more realistic moment. 

But their eyes weren’t deceiving them. Her head twitched back and forth a few times as she slowly came to. 

Bellamy stood stock still next to Clarke before he suddenly took off running towards his sister. Clarke followed, tears beginning to stream down her face. The first year of Octavia’s disappearance had been nearly impossible to process. Always expecting to see her in the hallways at school, not hearing her laugh at school assemblies when she should have been paying attention. No longer going over to the Blakes anymore had made it feel like a fever dream and it wasn’t until the second year rolled around that Clarke had grown more numb to it. Octavia had slowly become a statistic as cops couldn’t find a trace of her. The phantom limb and missing friendship had become a part of Clarke’s past. In this moment though everything came catapulting back. The ache of that first night of Octavia’s disappearance. The desperation that had clung to Aurora and cloaked her to this day. The severed bond she’d had with Bellamy. Her lungs hurt as she breathed in oxygen and her eyes still felt like they were recovering from the blinding lights of the saucer. She could nearly feel the blood pumping from her heart to the rest of her body, as her feet pounded the dirt with each step she took. 

Octavia barely had time to wake up before Bellamy collapsed on his knees beside her. The shock on each of their faces was mirrored perfectly, mouths agape and eyes wide as they took the sight of each other in.

“Hey big brother,” Octavia said hoarsely, just before being engulfed by Bellamy’s embrace. 

Clarke was just seconds before, dropping to her knees beside the siblings and joining the hug. She didn’t care that rocks and dirt were pressing painfully into her knees or that she was just now aware of the grit in her mouth from the whipping wind earlier. None of it mattered. Not when she could feel the warmth of Octavia’s body and the movement of her breath, the feel of Bellamy on the other side as the three of them formed a small huddle. 

She was home, she was really home.

* * *

Somehow it had been a week since that night. Since the night of the basketball game. Since the night Clarke had run around town with Bellamy, chasing after mysterious sounds and culminating in an honest to God UFO sighting –– if her brain was to be believed.

And even more-so, if Octavia was to be believed. 

The girl had spent the past week at the hospital, being analyzed and checked on. For someone who had been missing for just over two years there were aspects that didn’t line up. Her health seemed to be in top shape (maybe even better than when she’d disappeared if anyone was honest with themselves). The therapist she was assigned couldn’t determine any source of trauma. Just as there had been no trace of her disappearance, her arrival home was just as unexpected and without evidence. There was only Bellamy and Clarke’s word at discovering her. The two of them had kept quiet at first about the experience, but Octavia hadn’t had any issue with insisting that it really was aliens. It was finally with the therapist’s shrugging acceptance about it that got everyone to stop pestering her for some other type of “truth.” If that was what Octavia believed happened to her, and she seemed happy and healthy overall, it was difficult to fight against it. Plus, over a million people in the States alone believe they’ve been abducted, what was one more teenager if they couldn’t locate or even conceptualize a kidnapper?

After a general statement to the cops along with Bellamy though, Clarke hadn’t seen the Blakes all week. Her mom had been startled by the call to come to the station, an equally frantic Marcus in tow. She certainly hadn’t expected to find her daughter reporting on the recovery of her missing friend and since Clarke didn’t _exactly_ go into the details of her night, she only got a small reprimanding for leaving without telling them where she was going. So it wasn’t even that she was grounded or anything, but she still had homework and classes to attend to. Plus with Octavia swept up in medical appointments just in case, there wasn’t much of a reason to see them quite yet.

But now it was Friday and Clarke had already gotten permission from her mom to bike over to the Blake household to spend the night. Her first sleepover over there since Octavia’s disappearance and to say she was excited was an understatement. Over dinner, Clarke had taken in the changes in Octavia. The fullness of her cheeks, the sparkle in her eye. A sense of maturity that managed to show itself even in her hyperness, something new that she hadn’t had before. Granted, it had been two years. 

But still. 

It was odd.

They’d finished eating an hour ago and were lounging in the backyard. Bellamy had already nudged her to point out the faint constellations appearing in the dusky purple sky and Octavia had brought out popsicles for them. It was almost like nothing had changed.

Except tonight it was Octavia’s time for stories about the sky. Her mythology though was her own experiences. 

She told them all about where she was, a place called the Sky Ring. There were glowing butterflies and time moved differently. She spoke in hushed awe about the technology and that it was like watching her memories play out like a movie. At moments she wistfully mentioned a couple other people, only vaguely though, and in those moments she nearly grew older in front of them as Clarke watched her talk. The odd maturity she’d spotted in Octavia at the start was still there, almost shimmering at the edges when she’d grow quiet. And then Bellamy would tease her about how there’s no way aliens would keep their abductees together and then they’d launch into a tussle and all three of them would be laughing hysterically, Clarke forgetting about Octavia looking older.

She was pretty sure that Bellamy fully believed his sister. Or at least wanted to. And after the night they’d had, she couldn’t deny it either. Whether or not all of Octavia’s stories were true, Clarke couldn’t ignore what she and Bellamy had seen. 

Neither of them had rewatched the recordings they’d captured yet. They didn’t even know if the tape had worked and all their plans to sell it had evaporated. Octavia’s appearance was good enough for them. They hadn’t told the police about it. It was almost a guarantee no one had been listening to the radio station that night with everyone else at the game, outside of a few random people like Murphy and the elusive Orlando. And even less who thought much of what they’d heard, most likely writing it off as the ramblings of an old man. 

She hadn’t seen Emori and Murphy around town yet, though according to Bellamy they were still around and seemingly fine. She was thankful for that. It seemed the chaos of that night had led to a reunion and not another abduction. But still, she wondered how much they remembered from that night. 

At one point, Octavia darted inside, shouting about the need for a late night snack. Without her chatter, a moment of calm took over the backyard. Making Clarke once again alert to the fact that this was once again another time she was alone with Bellamy… and how another one of the last times he’d kissed her. Sure it had partially been to be a cover up so they didn’t look like they were stealing things from the library, but still. There might have been other ways to do it. Especially when she thought of the way they’d been around each other after during that night. 

And maybe she would have been more nervous about it, her brain having the potential to spiral, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she looked up to see Bellamy gazing at her steadily from his position on the ground. She immediately felt a flush creep up her cheeks. 

She decided at the moment she very much wouldn’t mind if he wanted to kiss her again. 

“On a scale of one to getting abducted by aliens, how weird do you think my sister would find it if I asked you out?” 

Clarke choked back at a laugh at his sudden question.

“I think she wouldn’t get to have a say in it since she’s the one who’s been gone for two years,” she replied back with a large smile. 

At the mention, Bellamy’s eyes turned slightly downcast so Clarke quickly leaned forward and kissed him. It was far from their first kiss which seemed almost ironic on some level, but it was gentle and still managed to convey the emotion she was hoping it would. 

“That was a yes by the way,” she said and grinned as the twinkle in his eyes returned.

“Gross, are you guys kissing? Ugh, someone please contact the aliens and tell them I want to go back,” griped Octavia, her voice floating in from behind them. 

Bellamy and Clarke looked at each other before dissolving into laughter as Octavia joined them. The conversation continued though, the younger Blake not saying a word as Bellamy eventually took Clarke’s hand in his and played with her hair. 

As the night continued and the conversations ebbed and flowed, Clarke felt a twinge of curiosity about Second Dawn in the back of her mind. It wasn’t like the company had disappeared and their involvement seemed shady at best with all of this. But it was hard to focus on that with Bellamy’s hand intertwined with hers. The way his thumb moved across her knuckles as Octavia ranted about having to catch up on school work for what she described as an eternity. 

So instead, Clarke rolled onto her back on the ground and looked up at the night sky. There were still traces of purple on the horizon, but otherwise darkness had taken over and stars winked down on her from above. 

She smiled, knowing that she wasn’t alone. 

Not alone here in Arkadia, with her family and now friends reunited. With the promise of something more with Bellamy. 

And certainly not alone in the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Since I didn’t want to make the top author’s note too long, I figured I’d expand on the X-Files references down here if you were curious. Octavia’s disappearance is a direct comparison to Mulder’s younger sister’s disappearance (though not necessarily on Bellamy’s character) and Emori’s story is inspired by the episode “Drive,” where a man and his wife are being affected by ELF waves being emitted by the US Navy too close to where they live in a trailer park. 
> 
> **Update!** I'm so excited for the love this fic got!! I received 1st Place in Trope: Reunion, and 2nd Place in Overall Category and in Tropes: Kiss to Keep Cover, Forehead Touch (tie)! Thanks everyone who voted! The moodboard for this fic can be found [here](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.tumblr.com/post/624359285676294144/per-aspera-ad-astra-through-hardship-to-the)!
> 
>  **where else you can find me:** [Tumblr](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/the_river_held) | [my carrd](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.carrd.co/)


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